A recently published study that manipulated Facebook News Feeds has sparked outrage among users who are criticizing the ethics behind the experiment, which was conducted by Facebook and several universities. Researchers tweaked the feeds of 689,003 users to show a disproportionate number of positive or negative statuses for one week in January 2012. They found that the emotions of others on your News Feed can affect your mood, and published the results in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). However, the researchers did not inform users that they were manipulating News Feeds, and many questioned the study’s ethics. Get the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

It’s easy for humans to identify faces in pictures on Facebook, but the method isn’t as simple for computers. Sure, Facebook has a suggested prompt that predicts who you’re trying to tag, but now the company is working on a technology that promises “near-human accuracy” so you won’t have to do it yourself in the future. Facebook’s API Group is developing software called DeepFace, which maps 3D facial features and creates a colorless model to narrow in on specific characterizations. The accuracy of the method is 97.25%, which is just under the 97.5% accuracy that a human can identify, according to the group. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

TED says its conferences provide “ideas worth spreading,” and Facebook apparently agrees. Facebook and TED on Monday announced a content collaboration for Paper, the company’s standalone news reader and publishing app released in late January. For the week, the Ideas section of Paper will feature TED material exclusively. The Ideas section within the app typically changes each day to highlight a new theme or topic, but TED will be the featured topic for the entire week during its TED2014 conference in Vancouver, Canada. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

The basic shape of urban growth is easy to spot; we look at the fastest-growing cities, for example, or immigration numbers. But yesterday, Facebook’s Data Science team revealed a less obvious pattern: Mass coordinated migration, where a group from the same city moves to another. Who are the winners and losers in this urban game? First of all, a bit of background on the methodology. The data team used the most basic information from users’ profiles: Hometown and current city. They grouped data points by users who shared hometowns and current cities, creating a map of group migration all over the globe. Below, red dots represent destination cities, while blue dots represent origin cities. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://gizmodo.com.au

Facebook still doesn’t have a Dislike button, but its Messenger app just received a collection of new stickers, including an image of a thumbs down. In April, Facebook introduced stickers — essentially, Facebook-branded emoticons — to its web and mobile chat feature. The latest crop of images in its “Like” pack includes a sore thumb, peace sign, poke and, of course, thumbs down. The Dislike icon was first spotted by The Verge. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

Facebook is the cigarette of 2013, the “bad habit” many are trying to kick. And the doubts seem to be stemming from Facebook’s younger users. Mashable reached out to a few Millennials, in particular, to find out why they left Facebook — and why some returned. While the reasons for cutting the cord ranged from the practical to the existential, many former Facebook users cited the stress of maintaining their online appearances. While half the users we questioned have returned to the site (albeit with a reduced presence), the other half consistently claim they’re happy to be “free” of Facebook. They found that once they got used to it, life without social media wasn’t as hard as they imagined. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

Just because you are Facebook friends with your old lab partner from high school doesn’t mean you want to see his posts each day in your News Feed. The social network will soon allow users to “unfollow” friends whose comments and updates they want to remove from their News Feed, according to a Facebook spokesperson. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

The 29-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of Facebook gave his most recent pitch for immigration reform during an interview on Sunday with ABC News’ This Week. “The future of our economy is a knowledge economy,” Zuckerberg said. “That means getting the most talented people into this country is the most important thing that we can do to make sure the companies of tomorrow are founded here.” To push for reform, Zuckerberg and other tech industry leaders launched FWD.us, a special interest group for immigration issues. Zuckerberg announced the group in a Washington Post op-ed in April. Read the rest of the original article here!* Text and image from http://mashable.com

It’s time to move on. The feeling is becoming more and more significant with each passing day and it just keeps spreading. It’s just not it any more… we want something new, exciting, which can take us places we’ve never been. We want to be surprised again. We want a new, better social network. Facebook may say its user base is growing, but original members from the last decade appear to be leaving in droves. As more niche networking services and platforms enter the space, people are finding that not any one company is serving all of their networking needs. Our tastes and channels are becoming fragmented, and users are pushing back on accepted norms in the social media space. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://mashable.com

Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) scheme has been knocking around in its current form since April 2012, formed out of a merging of its Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC) program and Marketing API Program (MAP). The aim of the group is to help connect brands and advertisers with developers who can make their marketing campaigns more engaging and comprehensive. What these developers provide depends on what is required. It’s a win-win situation for Facebook: more successful marketing campaigns on its platform means more businesses are likely to keep using it as part of its marketing and advertising activities. It’s not necessarily just engagement with audience that the PMDs can provide, though – it might well be cross-platform analytics that provide insights into campaigns, revealing data and findings that were previously unknown. Read the rest of the original article here! * Text and image from http://thenextweb.com